Draft:Scythe of Death

Omega 0.90.4

Scythe of Death)Base damage rating10000Base hit bonus+1000Normal attack typeCuttingHands2Weight500

The Scythe of Death is Death's two-handed weapon. Its landed melee attack kills the target, then kills the wielder on the backswing unless the player is already an Adept. Throwing it at a creature always misses. It is a different item from the scythe of slicing.

Obtaining

Death carries a neutral +0 scythe. In the final Challenge, completing the four elemental stations causes Death to appear. Defeating Death drops the current possessions, but Death immediately revives stronger with another scythe. The dropped weapon is real loot; the defeat is not a permanent removal of Death.

The scythe is excluded from ordinary random-object generation. Acquirement can still produce it through the separate weapon selection, including selection by a blessed acquirement. That constructor rolls blessing and enchantment for a newly acquired copy, unlike Death's fixed neutral +0 possession. Its item level is 10 and base value 10,000 Au; Julie's does not sell it.

The lethal attack

The scythe uses the normal initial attack hit check. Once that check succeeds, it invokes the target's death directly rather than rolling the listed 10,000 damage or testing physical immunity. The huge base +1000 hit makes ordinary hit checks favorable, but the natural miss outcome still exists.

The backswing then checks Adept rank. If the player has not attained it, death follows directly; high HP, armor and ordinary damage immunity are not substitutes. This checks the completed endgame rank, not high character level, a guild title or possession of the scythe.

Death's own special death handling still applies when struck by this weapon. An Adept can survive the backswing, but the scythe does not override Death's revival. The two hand slots also represent one scythe, not two independent weapons.

Throwing, the void and tunneling

Fire/Throw explicitly forces a miss when the scythe reaches a creature. It drops without running the lethal attack or backswing; throwing it is therefore not a pre-Adept instant-kill exploit. A cursed copy already in use cannot be thrown away.

The Challenge's void can be prepared by sacrificing an item into it. A spare scythe can serve, but the offering need not be Death's scythe: that check does not inspect the item's identity. Entering the void still has separate prerequisites, including carrying no objects and completing the station sequence. Merely sacrificing a scythe does not make the player an Adept.

Tunneling uses its base damage of 10,000 without invoking the lethal attack, but cutting-weapon mishaps can still attempt to damage the tool. Equipping it before Adept status remains dangerous if any subsequent attack triggers the backswing.

Strategy

Before becoming an Adept, treat the scythe as dangerous loot or a possible offering, not as an upgrade to wield. Obtaining one through acquirement does not bypass the rank requirement. The one-action lethality is especially unforgiving because the target dies before the player does; a successful hit is exactly what triggers the fatal return swing.

After Adept status, its attack can overcome opponents that resist ordinary weapon damage, but Death remains an exception to permanent killing. Keep its weight of 500 and curse status in mind before replacing lighter equipment.

Older spoilers describe killing with a thrown Scythe of Death. That advice conflicts with this version's explicit guaranteed-miss branch; it should not be used as a strategy for avoiding the backswing.